February 09, 2005

Beneath Contempt

Are you, like many Minnesotans, tired of having your taxes jacked up endlessly by a legislature that cares more about feeding the state bureaucracy than about your family's bottom line?

Did you send a buck or two to the Taxpayer's League, or vote for Governor Pawlenty and your state legislator because they took the TPLoM's "No New Taxes" pledge?

According to the head of the Minnesota State Patrol's Trooper's Association, you're no better than a racist, cop-murdering thug.

Read on.

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The late seventies and early eighties were a lousy time in rural North Dakota. The farm market was beginning to enter another wave of technological transformation that was making hordes of family farms obsolete; productivity was driving prices down below the point where lots of farmers could make ends meet.

Faced not only with a changing way of life, but an eroding income and evaporating lifestyle, people whose families had been on the land for generations, going back to their respective old countries were faced not only with career changes that nothing in their backgrounds could prepare them for, but bankruptcy and endless harassment by creditors, lawyers, and the IRS.

Faced with this choice, most farmers moved into other lines of work, or relocated, formed co-ops. They adapted.

Some, desperate for answers, saw the government as the primary problem - a common thread on the prairie, endless and expensive farm subsidy programs notwithstanding. They griped about the feds over coffee and donuts in countless, dying small town cafes.

Some of those people - very few - found their answers in anti-government groups - Christian Identity, the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, and the Wisconsin-based Posse Comitatus, among a welter of others. The Posse preached that all government above the county level was illegitimate, that the federal income tax was unconstitutional, and that races should not mingle. They were frequently calleld "Neo-Nazi", and as much as those groups intermingled, some members no doubt were. I wouldn't have let them babysit my kids.

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The nineties were a lousy time to be a constructionist and advocate of limited, restrained government in Minnesota. You had your choice of political parties; the pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-intervention party that favored raising taxes to pay for endless spending programs in an ever-expanding budget - or the DFL. Conservatives were held at arm's length even within the GOP.

That began to change later in the decade. There were lots of factors in this change; younger conservative turks moving into leadership within the party; the rise of talk radio, giving voice to the formerly silent conservative undercurrents in the state and party; and the Taxpayers League, which may not have been the first conservative lobbying group in Minnesota, but it was the first to get any traction.

David Strom is the relentlessly upbeat leader of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. A lapsed academic but a bon vivant in good standing, he leads a group with a fairly simple agenda; lower taxes, more government accountability, more taxpayer voice in government.

Read the website. See if you can find any references to violent resistance, racial separation, sabotage of the tax system, dismantling of government...anything.

Take a moment and try. Please.

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Corporal Timothy Jensen is the president of the Minnesota State Patrol Troopers' Association, a public employees union.

Jensen, writing in his capacity as president of the MSPTA in the Winter '04/05 edition of the union's house organ, starts out with a recollection:

That Sunday in February 1983 was my first introduction to the world the violent tax protesters. While attempting to serve a warrant for a probation violation on a tax protester named Gordon Kahl, Federal Marshal Ken Muir and Deputy Marshal Bob Cheshire were executed on a North Dakota highway.

Cops are sensitive about other cops' deaths in the line of duty. I'll buy that, and accept that as a reason for Jensen's hyperbole.

But according to James Corcoran, a former Fargo Forum reporter whose book Bitter Harvest was the definitive history of the event, the marshalls, along with a squad of Stutsman County deputies and Medina (ND) police, were waiting for Kahl at a roadblock. Knowing the Posse members to be armed, the police carried shotguns and assault rifles. The Posse fired first, the Marshalls went down firing. It was murder, and it was a ghastly crime that killed two good men. But it was no execution; they had the ability to fight back.

But that's not the story. Jensen continues:

During my time in Clay County [the Moorhead area] I remember several confrontations with Posse members. One confrontation still haunts me as a near-death experience. I stopped a Posse member one evening in a rurual location, nowing the slug had an outstanging warrant. The man was well known to law enforcement as a problem billy With no assistance available for miles, I confronted the man alone. He decided he would not be taken into custody, and the fight was on. We fought on the blacktop, on the shoulder, and in the ditch. He broke away and ran into the woods where I followed him and tackled him. We fought until we could not fight anymore As he pinned me in the dirt, I drew my gun with every intention of killing him before he killed me...for 22 years, I have had no use for radical tax protesters. They are irratitional and a danger to a democratic society.

I know you are wondering, what in the world is he rambling about now?

Indeed, but not for long.

As radical as the Posse Comitatus is about protesting taxes, we have a radical anti-tax organization within our own state that advocates some of the same Posse principles. Where the Posse uses violence and irrational right-wing beliefs to advance its cause, our Minnesota organization uses money, threats and political blackmail to enforce its anti-tax, anti-government agenda.

WHAT organization?

The organization is proud of its "no new taxes" pledge it has blackmailed many of our elected officials into signing, and posts its conquests prominently on its website. Although the organization isn't obviously violent, its final result is just as dangerous. We have radicals dictating how our quality of life will be affected.

Got that? He's talking about the Taxpayer's League of Minnesota.

According to the head of a state employees union, lobbying to lower taxes and make government more accountable and transparent is morally equivalent to being a racist, cop-murdering radical separatist.

Whether you dress a tax protester in camouflage with an automatic rifle, or in a business suit with a laptop computer, the protester is still nothing more than a radical. Our Minnesota quality of life is too precious to be lost over a blackmail pledge. Let's get on with the people's business. Our quality of life is slipping away.

So there's no difference at all between someone who protests taxes through the courts, the legislature and at the polls - the way our country is supposed to work, via the democratic system - and someone who secedes from the system and threatens to kill anyone who tries to drag them back?

We allow this man to carry a gun? To write tickets? To carry out snap judgements about the activities of the rest of us?

That phrase - "Let's get on with the peoples' business" - echoes the justification for some of the most ghastly crimes of the last century. Minnesota's "quality of life" - defined earlier in the piece as "valuable public employees, expected services..." - are "slipping away", more or less like the Posse thug on that road in Clay County so long ago.

Lefties - you think you have no stake in this? How is this different than saying "An anti-war protester is no different than a terrorist?" If any conservative - much less David Strom - had said any such thing, they'd be pilloried, lynched from the nearest rhetorical lamppost.

Corporal Jensen owes us, the people who pay his salary, an explanation. Is "lobbying for a more accountable government" morally the same as "killing cops"? Really? Is wanting my state government to give me much better explanations for where my tax money goes than in the past the same as trying not to pay at all? Is exercising my right as a law-abiding citizen and voting for the candidate who promises to hold government accountable the same as drawing a bead on a cop at a roadblock and squeezing the trigger?

Is that where you want this discussion to go?

By the way - while the publication is apparently not printed by the government, the MSPTA represents a labor force that is entirely paid by the taxpayer, and whose budget is entirely paid by dues deducted from public employee salaries.

Corporal Jensen owes us - the good, patriotic, law-and-order supporting citizens he so casually defames in his article - an apology. Please - take a moment and contact:

The guy shouldn't offer an apology. He should resign. A law enforcement officer who states that engaging political lobbying, and using the ballot to sway government policy, is analogous to murdering law enforcement officers, has not only defamed law abiding citizens who pay his salary, but has defamed the memory of the officers killed. No, you twit, having citizens advocate that votes be cast against a legislator who raises taxes is not even in the same universe as murdering law enforcement officers who are fufilling their duties. That you have drawn an analogy between the two renders you unfit to draw a paycheck from the taxpayers. Go crawl back under a rock.

In 1983 my parents home was under 24 hour armed surveilance by federal marshalls. My father worked for the IRS and was the subject of threats from a Posse affiliated group (not Kahl's) in northern Minnesota. One evening, he was met while leaving his office by a man who pulled his jacket back to reveal a pistol. My father turned and walked away.

Eventually, several people were sent to prison and (literally) truckloads of munitions were removed from the properties of those involved. My father took an early retirement.

Corporal Jensen has nothing on my dad when it comes to physical threats from whack jobs. Indeed, from his own recounting of his "near-death" experience, he CHOSE to pursue someone who was not an immediate threat, while enjoying the benefit of being armed. In this layman's opinion, if that event is described accurately, he should have been removed from the patrol for such attrocious judgement years ago.

I am no fan of David Strom. For some reason, he rubs me the wrong way (overexposure, perhaps). To equate him with those who terrorized our family is so repugnant that, well, I can't come up with adequate words to describe how I'm feeling right now.

Thank you for this post. Later on, when my blood pressure subsides, I will be contacting the links you provided.

Sorry to go on, but I just read Jensen's entire article and now I'm incensed on a completely different level.

He claims to be a "conservative who would rather not pay taxes", then adds, "However, I have grown to expect a certain quality of life that is somewhat dependent on our government." Somewhat? Somewhat! Everything this guy has is directly dependent on the government, SINCE HE IS A GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE! Don't get me wrong, I harbor no ill will towards public employees (see my earlier post), but this guy is pimping for a raise in his own salary on the backs of dead colleagues. I cannot fathom anything lower.

No, I don't think that's not the answer. My former college roommate is a member of the State Patrol, recently married, child on the way. I don't imagine he'd much appreciate having his raise held in check whilst a vendetta is waged against a moron. No sense punishing the entire State Patrol for the stupid written musings of one of their own.

I liked the comment of "pimping for a raise on the backs of dead comrades". That was my first thought. Typical leftist trash-talk. They CARE so much when in reality it's a way to keep their individual gravy-trains rolling (Jesse Jackson & that type).
My son is a County Deputy and knows plenty of Patrolmen who are staunch conservatives. This would have their blood boiling as well.
As to the Gordon Kahl/Posse Comitatus deal....that too isn't all it's made out to be. I would trust my children with people like that any day. I would be people like that if need be. And need will someday be...just watch.

The truckloads of munitions which were recovered from the fine citizens who had it in for my dad? They had a novel way of financing those purchases - through a series of armed bank robberies. The ringleader was a convicted felon who had earlier escaped from prison.

Fair enough. I don't know enough about the Kahl case to comment. I must say, however, that your statement "I would be people like that if need be. And need will someday be..." disturbed me a great deal. I don't understand the motivation behind such an ominous sounding declaration (given the context).

If I'm reading too much into it, forgive me. But when you're the one facing a threat, it doesn't much matter if it's coming from a bank robber or a farmer.

As repulsive as I found Jensen's commentary, I do empathize with his notion that taxes aren't worth killing over. I hope you can agree.

No, "taxes" per se aren't worth killing for, but freedom might be another case entirely. And that's what this all boils down to in the end. Bit by bit it is taken away (HAS been taken away). My statement, BTW, was not offense-directed...I'm talking defense.

I spoke with my State Trooper friend today. He didn't know much about the newsletter, but he did tell me that he's met Jensen, and he's come to the conclusion that Jensen is, shall we say, a certain reproductive organ of the male anatomy.

As I was searching some new inforammation onn Gordon Kahl, I ran across this Feb. 9, 05 "Beneath Contempt" article. During the 1983 Kalh episode, I was the Chief of Police of Medina, ND.
I am appalled at the remarks made by the Corporal. This mentality was plentiful in the early days after the "Meidna Shootout". Since, however, it has subsided dramatically due to the facts that came out as time went on.
There are so many tenticles to the story, this was a great deal more thatn a "tax protester" shooting up Feds. This story goes deep.
In 1999, I co-authored a book entitled "It's All About POWER". This book tells the story and would even make folks in law enforcement like the Corporal take a second ook at why this turned violent. To paint all people upset with taxex with thee same brush, is like painting all Indians or Blacks with the same brush.
Certainly, there are nuts out and about. They are relatively harmless to the public, and generally only take a stand against Government. This can vary, however, as sometimes banks are robbed and armored cars heisted to forward their causes, but this was not Kahls way of doing things. Had Kahl been violent to the public or out there robbing banks, I would bhave been the first to stand up agianst him. On the other hand, when a minor paperwork issue escalates to a gunfight, I would say we have problems. Buy you must see why. Get the book, you will find those answers.
Kahl had some issues, but so did others involved.
It was All About POWER. Sounds like there might be a POWER problem with the Corporal. Think aobut this - the Corporal is the head of his Union. As if a Union has never commited any crimes???? Go find Hoffa.

As I was searching some new inforammation onn Gordon Kahl, I ran across this Feb. 9, 05 "Beneath Contempt" article. During the 1983 Kalh episode, I was the Chief of Police of Medina, ND.
I am appalled at the remarks made by the Corporal. This mentality was plentiful in the early days after the "Meidna Shootout". Since, however, it has subsided dramatically due to the facts that came out as time went on.
There are so many tenticles to the story, this was a great deal more thatn a "tax protester" shooting up Feds. This story goes deep.
In 1999, I co-authored a book entitled "It's All About POWER". This book tells the story and would even make folks in law enforcement like the Corporal take a second ook at why this turned violent. To paint all people upset with taxex with thee same brush, is like painting all Indians or Blacks with the same brush.
Certainly, there are nuts out and about. They are relatively harmless to the public, and generally only take a stand against Government. This can vary, however, as sometimes banks are robbed and armored cars heisted to forward their causes, but this was not Kahls way of doing things. Had Kahl been violent to the public or out there robbing banks, I would bhave been the first to stand up agianst him. On the other hand, when a minor paperwork issue escalates to a gunfight, I would say we have problems. Buy you must see why. Get the book, you will find those answers.
Kahl had some issues, but so did others involved.
It was All About POWER. Sounds like there might be a POWER problem with the Corporal. Think aobut this - the Corporal is the head of his Union. As if a Union has never commited any crimes???? Go find Hoffa.

As I was searching some new inforammation onn Gordon Kahl, I ran across this Feb. 9, 05 "Beneath Contempt" article. During the 1983 Kalh episode, I was the Chief of Police of Medina, ND.
I am appalled at the remarks made by the Corporal. This mentality was plentiful in the early days after the "Meidna Shootout". Since, however, it has subsided dramatically due to the facts that came out as time went on.
There are so many tenticles to the story, this was a great deal more thatn a "tax protester" shooting up Feds. This story goes deep.
In 1999, I co-authored a book entitled "It's All About POWER". This book tells the story and would even make folks in law enforcement like the Corporal take a second ook at why this turned violent. To paint all people upset with taxex with thee same brush, is like painting all Indians or Blacks with the same brush.
Certainly, there are nuts out and about. They are relatively harmless to the public, and generally only take a stand against Government. This can vary, however, as sometimes banks are robbed and armored cars heisted to forward their causes, but this was not Kahls way of doing things. Had Kahl been violent to the public or out there robbing banks, I would bhave been the first to stand up agianst him. On the other hand, when a minor paperwork issue escalates to a gunfight, I would say we have problems. Buy you must see why. Get the book, you will find those answers.
Kahl had some issues, but so did others involved.
It was All About POWER. Sounds like there might be a POWER problem with the Corporal. Think aobut this - the Corporal is the head of his Union. As if a Union has never commited any crimes???? Go find Hoffa.